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Women played critical roles in the American Revolution and subsequent War for Independence. Historian Cokie Roberts considers these women our Founding Mothers.

Women like Abigail Adams, the wife of Massachusetts Congressional Delegate John Adams, influenced politics as did Mercy Otis Warren. It was Abigail Adams who famously and voluminously corresponded with her husband while he was in Philadelphia, reminding him that in the new form of government that was being established he should "remember the ladies" or they too, would foment a revolution of their own. Warren, just as politically astute as Adams, was a prolific writer, not only recording her thoughts about the confluence of events swirling around Boston but also dabbling in playwriting. She was a fierce devotee to the patriot cause, writing in December 1774, four months before the war broke out at Lexington and Concord, "America stands armed with resolution and virtue, but she still recoils at the idea of drawing the sword against the nation from whence she derived her origin." In 1805 she published History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution.

Women often followed their husbands in the Continental Army. These women, known as camp followers, often tended to the domestic side of army organization, washing, cooking, mending clothes, and providing medical help when necessary. Sometimes they were flung into the vortex of battle. Such was the case of Mary Ludwig Hays, better known as Molly Pitcher, who earned fame at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778. Hays first brought soldiers water from a local well to quench their thirst on an extremely hot and humid day and then replaced her wounded husband at his artillery piece, firing at the oncoming British. In a similar vein, Margaret Corbin was severely wounded during the British assault on Fort Washington in November 1776 and left for dead alongside her husband, also an artilleryman, until she was attended by a physician. She lived, though her wounds left her permanently disabled. History recalls her as the first American female to receive a soldier's lifetime pension after the war.

Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved African American living in Boston, took up the pen and wrote poetry, becoming one of the first published female authors in America and the first African American woman to be published. Her 1773 collection Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was popular on both sides of the Atlantic. Her poems focused on patriotism and human virtues. She even wrote a poem about George Washington, "To His Excellency, George Washington" in 1775, which she personally read to him at his Cambridge headquarters in 1776 while he was with the Continental Army in Massachusetts besieging the British. Her visit was the result of an invitation from Washington. Wheatley obtained her freedom upon the death of her master in 1778.

New York teenager Sybil Ludington, was the female equivalent of Paul Revere, though she rode twice as far as Revere and in a driving rainstorm in April, 1777. Her ride took her through Putnam and Dutchess Counties, New York where she roused local militia to fight a British force that had attacked nearby Danbury, Connecticut. The Daughters of the American Revolution erected a heroic equestrian statue to Ludington in Carmel, New York along the forty-mile route she traveled.

The story of one of the most famous revolutionary women, Betsy Ross, is likely just that - a story. Ross is often credited with sewing the first American flag, thirteen red and white stripes with thirteen stars in a field of blue in the corner. Subsequent research, however, shows that the story only surfaced around the Centennial, 1876, and was promoted by Ross's grandson William Canby. Given that Congress passed the Flag Act in June of 1777, nearly a year after Ross is purported to have made the flag, the story is likely apocryphal.

As wives of the common soldier often followed the Continental Army so, too, did the wives of general officers. General Henry Knox, the Continental Army's Artillery Commander married the vivacious and popular Bostonian Lucy Flucker, the daughter of Bostonian Loyalists. Once she and Henry were married, all ties between her and her family were cut. Henry and Lucy were devoted to one another and she would join him whenever she could while he was on campaign. She endured the bitter encampment at Valley Forge and became fast friends with the wife of General Nathanael Greene, the equally popular Kitty. George Washington's wife, Martha Custis, spent every winter with her husband wherever the army was camped. In fact, once George Washington left his beloved Mount Vernon estate in 1775 to attend the 2nd Continental Congress in Philadelphia, he did not return to his home until 1781, as the combined American and French Army maneuvered south from the city of New York to Yorktown, Virginia, where the war was eventually won. The wives of generals were as equally helpful in matters of caring and providing compassion to sick and wounded soldiers, as were the wives of the common soldiers.

Ordinary women also endured the horrors of the battlefield when those fights came to their doorstep. Sally Kellogg of Vermont and her family escaped the gods of War in 1776 when the War for Independence found its way into the northern reaches of upstate New York and Benedict Arnold's makeshift fleet and the British Navy clashed on Lake Champlain during the Battle of Valcour Island. As the Kellogg family made good its escape by water, Sally's family "fell in between Arnold's fleet and the British fleet," she later recalled. As the family rowed to safety at Fort Ticonderoga, the exchange of gunfire between ships could be seen and heard Sally recalled, "but happy for us the balls went over us. We heard them whis." Nevertheless, the war continued to follow the Kellogg family. A year later, after having relocated to Bennington, Vermont the Kelloggss were once more forced to be witnesses to carnage and once again upon recollection Sally claimed the results were, "a sight to behold. There was not a house [in Bennington's vicinity] but was stowed full of wounded.

Not unlike women eighty years later who disguised themselves as men to serve in the armies of the Civil War, women of the Revolutionary Era also itched to get into the fight, do their part for the cause, and be engaged in a historical moment. One of the best examples of a woman who disguised herself as a man to fight in the Continental Army was Deborah Sampson from Uxbridge, Massachusetts. Amazingly, she also has a paper trail concerning her combat service in the army, where she fought under the alias of Robert Shurtliff, the name of her deceased brother, in the light infantry company of the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment. She mustered into service in the spring of 1782 and saw action in Westchester County, New York just north of the City of New York where she was wounded in her thigh and forehead. Not wanting her identity to be revealed during medical care she permitted physicians to treat her head wound and then slipped out of the field hospital unnoticed, where she extracted one of the bullets from her thigh with a penknife and sewing needle. The other bullet was lodged too deep and her leg never fully healed. Her identity was finally revealed during the summer of 1783 when she contracted a fever while on duty in Philadelphia. The physician who treated her kept her secret and cared for her. After the Treaty of Paris, she was given an honorable discharge from the army by Henry Knox. Like other veterans of the Continental Army, she was continually petitioning the state and federal government for her service pension. She later married and had three children settling down in Sharon, Massachusetts. To help make ends meet she often gave public lectures about her wartime service. By the time she died in 1827, she was collecting minimal pensions for her service from Massachusetts and the federal government. In her memory a statue stands today outside the public library, in Sharon, honoring her Revolutionary War service and sacrifices.

Many women of all stripes and from all backgrounds recognized the value of the American cause and stepped up to serve the cause of the new nation as best they could.

Further Reading:

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Women played critical roles in the American Revolution and subsequent War for Independence. Historian Cokie Roberts considers these women our Founding...

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Phillis Wheatley Peters, also spelled Phyllis and Wheatly (c. 1753 - December 5, 1784) was the first African-American author of a published book of poetry. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at the age of seven or eight and transported to North America. She was enslaved by the Wheatley family of Boston. After she learned to read and write, they encouraged her poetry when they saw her talent.

On a 1773 trip to London with her master's son, seeking publication of her work, Wheatley met prominent people who became patrons. The publication in London of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral on September 1, 1773, brought her fame both in England and the American colonies. Figures such as George Washington praised her work. A few years later, African-American poet Jupiter Hammon praised her work in a poem of his own.

Wheatley was emancipated by her masters shortly after the publication of her book. They soon died, and she married poor grocer John Peters, lost three children, and died in poverty and obscurity at the age of 31.

Although the date and place of her birth are not documented, scholars believe that Phillis Wheatley was born in 1753 in West Africa, most likely in present-day Gambia or Senegal. She was sold by a local chief to a visiting trader, who took her to Boston in the British Colony of Massachusetts, on July 11, 1761, on a slave ship called The Phillis. It was owned by Timothy Fitch and captained by Peter Gwinn.

On arrival in Boston, she was enslaved by John Wheatley, a wealthy Boston merchant and tailor, who bought the young girl as a slave for his wife Susanna. John and Susanna Wheatley named her Phillis, after the ship that had transported her to America. She was given their last name of Wheatley, as was a common custom if any surname was used for enslaved people.

The Wheatleys' 18-year-old daughter, Mary, was Phillis's first tutor in reading and writing. Their son, Nathaniel, also helped her. John Wheatley was known as a progressive throughout New England; his family afforded Phillis an unprecedented education for an enslaved person, and one unusual for a woman of any race. By the age of 12, she was reading Greek and Latin classics in their original languages, as well as difficult passages from the Bible. At the age of 14, she wrote her first poem, "To the University of Cambridge [Harvard], in New England". Recognizing her literary ability, the Wheatley family supported Phillis's education and left household labor to their other domestic enslaved workers. The Wheatleys often showed off her abilities to friends and family. Strongly influenced by her readings of the works of Alexander Pope, John Milton, Homer, Horace, and Virgil, Phillis began to write poetry.

In 1773, at the age of 20, Phillis accompanied Nathaniel Wheatley to London in part for her health (she suffered from chronic asthma), but largely because Susanna believed Phillis would have a better chance of publishing her book of poems there. She had an audience with Frederick Bull, the Lord Mayor of London and other significant members of British society. (An audience with King George III was arranged, but Phillis returned to Boston before it could take place.) Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, became interested in the talented young African woman and subsidized the publication of Wheatley's volume of poems, which appeared in London in the summer of 1773. As Hastings was ill, she and Phillis never met.

After her book was published, by November 1773, the Wheatleys emancipated Phillis. Her former enslaver Susanna died in the spring of 1774, and John in 1778. Shortly after, Wheatley met and married John Peters, a free black grocer. They lived in poor conditions and two of their babies died.

John was improvident and was imprisoned for debt in 1784. With a sickly infant son to provide for, Phillis became a scullery maid at a boarding house, work she had not done before. She died on December 5, 1784, at the age of 31. Her infant son died soon after.

Other writings

Phillis Wheatley wrote a letter to Reverend Samson Occom, commending him on his ideas and beliefs stating that enslaved people should be given their natural-born rights in America. Wheatley also exchanged letters with the British philanthropist John Thornton, who discussed Wheatley and her poetry in correspondence with John Newton. Along with her poetry, she was able to express her thoughts, comments and concerns to others.

In 1775, she sent a copy of a poem entitled "To His Excellency, George Washington" to the then-military general. The following year, Washington invited Wheatley to visit him at his headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which she did in March 1776. Thomas Paine republished the poem in the Pennsylvania Gazette in April 1776.

In 1779 Wheatley issued a proposal for a second volume of poems, but was unable to publish it because she had lost her patrons after her emancipation; publication of books was often based on gaining subscriptions for guaranteed sales beforehand. The American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) was also a factor. However, some of her poems that were to be included in the second volume were later published in pamphlets and newspapers.

In 1768, Wheatley wrote "To the King's Most Excellent Majesty", in which she praised King George III for repealing the Stamp Act. As the American Revolution gained strength, Wheatley's writing turned to themes that expressed ideas of the rebellious colonists.

In 1770 Wheatley wrote a poetic tribute to the evangelist George Whitefield. Her poetry expressed Christian themes, and many poems were dedicated to famous figures. Over one-third consist of elegies, the remainder being on religious, classical, and abstract themes. She seldom referred to her own life in her poems. One example of a poem on slavery is "On being brought from Africa to America":

Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic dye."
Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

Many colonists found it difficult to believe that an African slave was writing "excellent" poetry. Wheatley had to defend her authorship of her poetry in court in 1772. She was examined by a group of Boston luminaries, including John Erving, Reverend Charles Chauncey, John Hancock, Thomas Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts, and his lieutenant governor Andrew Oliver. They concluded she had written the poems ascribed to her and signed an attestation, which was included in the preface of her book of collected works: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, published in London in 1773. Publishers in Boston had declined to publish it, but her work was of great interest to influential people in London.

There, Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, and the Earl of Dartmouth acted as patrons to help Wheatley gain publication. Her poetry received comment in The London Magazine in 1773, which published as a "specimen" of her work her poem 'Hymn to the Morning', and said: "these poems display no astonishing works of genius, but when we consider them as the productions of a young, untutored African, who wrote them after six months careful study of the English language, we cannot but suppress our admiration for talents so vigorous and lively." Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was printed in 11 editions until 1816.

In 1778, the African-American poet Jupiter Hammon wrote an ode to Wheatley ("An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatley"). His master Lloyd had temporarily moved with his slaves to Hartford, Connecticut, during the Revolutionary War. Hammon thought that Wheatley had succumbed to what he believed were pagan influences in her writing, and so his "Address" consisted of 21 rhyming quatrains, each accompanied by a related Bible verse, that he thought would compel Wheatley to return to a Christian path in life.

In 1838 Boston-based publisher and abolitionist Isaac Knapp published a collection of Wheatley's poetry, along with that of enslaved North Carolina poet George Moses Horton, under the title Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley, A Native African and a Slave. Also, Poems by a Slave. Wheatley's memoir was earlier published in 1834 by Geo W. Light, but did not include poems by Horton.

Thomas Jefferson, in his book Notes on the State of Virginia, was unwilling to acknowledge the value of her work or the work of any black poet. He wrote:

Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism.

Legacy and honors

With the 1773 publication of Wheatley's book Poems on Various Subjects, she "became the most famous African on the face of the earth." Voltaire stated in a letter to a friend that Wheatley had proved that black people could write poetry. John Paul Jones asked a fellow officer to deliver some of his personal writings to "Phillis the African favorite of the Nine (muses) and Apollo." She was honored by many of America's founding fathers, including George Washington, who wrote to her (after she wrote a poem in his honor) that "the style and manner [of your poetry] exhibit a striking proof of your great poetical Talents."

Critics consider her work fundamental to the genre of African-American literature, and she is honored as the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry and the first to make a living from her writing.

In 2002, the scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Phillis Wheatley as one of his 100 Greatest African Americans.

Wheatley is featured, along with Abigail Adams and Lucy Stone, in the Boston Women's Memorial, a 2003 sculpture on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts.

In 2012, Robert Morris University named the new building for their School of Communications and Information Sciences after Phillis Wheatley.

Wheatley Hall at UMass Boston is named for Phillis Wheatley.

She is commemorated on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail. The Phyllis Wheatley YWCA in Washington, D.C. and the Phillis Wheatley High School in Houston, Texas, are named for her, as was the historic Phillis Wheatley School in Jensen Beach, Florida, now the oldest building on the campus of American Legion Post 126 (Jensen Beach, Florida). A branch of the Richland County Library in Columbia, South Carolina, which offered the first library services to black citizens, is named for her. Phillis Wheatley Elementary School, New Orleans, opened in 1954 in Tremé, one of the oldest African-American neighborhoods in the US. The Phillis Wheatley Community Center opened in 1920 in Greenville, South Carolina, and in 1924 (spelled "Phyllis") in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

On July 16, 2019, at the London site where A. Bell Booksellers published Wheatley's first book in September 1773 (8 Aldgate, now the location of the Dorsett City Hotel), the unveiling took place of a commemorative blue plaque honoring her, organized by the Nubian Jak Community Trust and Black History Walks.

Wheatley is the subject of a project and play by British-Nigerian writer Ade Solanke entitled Phillis in London, which was showcased at the Greenwich Book Festival in June 2018.

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Phillis Wheatley Peters, also spelled Phyllis and Wheatly (c. 1753 - December 5, 1784) was the first African-American author of a published book of poetry. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at the age of seven or eight and transported to North America.

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Women played critical roles in the American Revolution and subsequent War for Independence. Historian Cokie Roberts considers these women our Founding Mothers.

Women like Abigail Adams, the wife of Massachusetts Congressional Delegate John Adams, influenced politics as did Mercy Otis Warren. It was Abigail Adams who famously and voluminously corresponded with her husband while he was in Philadelphia, reminding him that in the new form of government that was being established he should "remember the ladies" or they too, would foment a revolution of their own. Warren, just as politically astute as Adams, was a prolific writer, not only recording her thoughts about the confluence of events swirling around Boston but also dabbling in playwriting. She was a fierce devotee to the patriot cause, writing in December 1774, four months before the war broke out at Lexington and Concord, "America stands armed with resolution and virtue, but she still recoils at the idea of drawing the sword against the nation from whence she derived her origin." In 1805 she published History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution.

Women often followed their husbands in the Continental Army. These women, known as camp followers, often tended to the domestic side of army organization, washing, cooking, mending clothes, and providing medical help when necessary. Sometimes they were flung into the vortex of battle. Such was the case of Mary Ludwig Hays, better known as Molly Pitcher, who earned fame at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778. Hays first brought soldiers water from a local well to quench their thirst on an extremely hot and humid day and then replaced her wounded husband at his artillery piece, firing at the oncoming British. In a similar vein, Margaret Corbin was severely wounded during the British assault on Fort Washington in November 1776 and left for dead alongside her husband, also an artilleryman, until she was attended by a physician. She lived, though her wounds left her permanently disabled. History recalls her as the first American female to receive a soldier's lifetime pension after the war.

Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved African American living in Boston, took up the pen and wrote poetry, becoming one of the first published female authors in America and the first African American woman to be published. Her 1773 collection Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was popular on both sides of the Atlantic. Her poems focused on patriotism and human virtues. She even wrote a poem about George Washington, "To His Excellency, George Washington" in 1775, which she personally read to him at his Cambridge headquarters in 1776 while he was with the Continental Army in Massachusetts besieging the British. Her visit was the result of an invitation from Washington. Wheatley obtained her freedom upon the death of her master in 1778.

New York teenager Sybil Ludington, was the female equivalent of Paul Revere, though she rode twice as far as Revere and in a driving rainstorm in April, 1777. Her ride took her through Putnam and Dutchess Counties, New York where she roused local militia to fight a British force that had attacked nearby Danbury, Connecticut. The Daughters of the American Revolution erected a heroic equestrian statue to Ludington in Carmel, New York along the forty-mile route she traveled.

The story of one of the most famous revolutionary women, Betsy Ross, is likely just that - a story. Ross is often credited with sewing the first American flag, thirteen red and white stripes with thirteen stars in a field of blue in the corner. Subsequent research, however, shows that the story only surfaced around the Centennial, 1876, and was promoted by Ross's grandson William Canby. Given that Congress passed the Flag Act in June of 1777, nearly a year after Ross is purported to have made the flag, the story is likely apocryphal.

As wives of the common soldier often followed the Continental Army so, too, did the wives of general officers. General Henry Knox, the Continental Army's Artillery Commander married the vivacious and popular Bostonian Lucy Flucker, the daughter of Bostonian Loyalists. Once she and Henry were married, all ties between her and her family were cut. Henry and Lucy were devoted to one another and she would join him whenever she could while he was on campaign. She endured the bitter encampment at Valley Forge and became fast friends with the wife of General Nathanael Greene, the equally popular Kitty. George Washington's wife, Martha Custis, spent every winter with her husband wherever the army was camped. In fact, once George Washington left his beloved Mount Vernon estate in 1775 to attend the 2nd Continental Congress in Philadelphia, he did not return to his home until 1781, as the combined American and French Army maneuvered south from the city of New York to Yorktown, Virginia, where the war was eventually won. The wives of generals were as equally helpful in matters of caring and providing compassion to sick and wounded soldiers, as were the wives of the common soldiers.

Ordinary women also endured the horrors of the battlefield when those fights came to their doorstep. Sally Kellogg of Vermont and her family escaped the gods of War in 1776 when the War for Independence found its way into the northern reaches of upstate New York and Benedict Arnold's makeshift fleet and the British Navy clashed on Lake Champlain during the Battle of Valcour Island. As the Kellogg family made good its escape by water, Sally's family "fell in between Arnold's fleet and the British fleet," she later recalled. As the family rowed to safety at Fort Ticonderoga, the exchange of gunfire between ships could be seen and heard Sally recalled, "but happy for us the balls went over us. We heard them whis." Nevertheless, the war continued to follow the Kellogg family. A year later, after having relocated to Bennington, Vermont the Kelloggss were once more forced to be witnesses to carnage and once again upon recollection Sally claimed the results were, "a sight to behold. There was not a house [in Bennington's vicinity] but was stowed full of wounded.

Not unlike women eighty years later who disguised themselves as men to serve in the armies of the Civil War, women of the Revolutionary Era also itched to get into the fight, do their part for the cause, and be engaged in a historical moment. One of the best examples of a woman who disguised herself as a man to fight in the Continental Army was Deborah Sampson from Uxbridge, Massachusetts. Amazingly, she also has a paper trail concerning her combat service in the army, where she fought under the alias of Robert Shurtliff, the name of her deceased brother, in the light infantry company of the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment. She mustered into service in the spring of 1782 and saw action in Westchester County, New York just north of the City of New York where she was wounded in her thigh and forehead. Not wanting her identity to be revealed during medical care she permitted physicians to treat her head wound and then slipped out of the field hospital unnoticed, where she extracted one of the bullets from her thigh with a penknife and sewing needle. The other bullet was lodged too deep and her leg never fully healed. Her identity was finally revealed during the summer of 1783 when she contracted a fever while on duty in Philadelphia. The physician who treated her kept her secret and cared for her. After the Treaty of Paris, she was given an honorable discharge from the army by Henry Knox. Like other veterans of the Continental Army, she was continually petitioning the state and federal government for her service pension. She later married and had three children settling down in Sharon, Massachusetts. To help make ends meet she often gave public lectures about her wartime service. By the time she died in 1827, she was collecting minimal pensions for her service from Massachusetts and the federal government. In her memory a statue stands today outside the public library, in Sharon, honoring her Revolutionary War service and sacrifices.

Many women of all stripes and from all backgrounds recognized the value of the American cause and stepped up to serve the cause of the new nation as best they could.

Further Reading:

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Women played critical roles in the American Revolution and subsequent War for Independence. Historian Cokie Roberts considers these women our Founding...

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10 Amazing Woman of the Revolutionary War

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10 Amazing Woman of the Revolutionary War

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Learn about the generals and military leaders of the American Revolution including George Washington, Nathanael Greene, Horatio Gates, John Paul Jones, William Howe, and Thomas Gage.

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Learn about spies during the American Revolution including secret messages, invisible ink, famous agents, the Culper Spy Ring, disguises, and interesting facts.

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Learn about Daily Life During the Revolutionary War including houses, clothes, food, school, and other fun facts.

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Learn about the biography of Molly Pitcher including her real name, folklore, where the name came from, Mary Ludwig Hays, Margaret Corbin, and interesting facts.

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Women supported the American Revolution by making homespun cloth, working to produce goods and services to help the army, and even serving as spies.

Women performed crucial tasks in the American Revolution, organizing fundraising drives, supplying the troops, working in the military camps, and tending to the wounded soldiers.

One of the most common ways that women supported the war effort was by making homespun, home-made cloth that took on revolutionary symbolism after the colonies imposed boycotts on British goods, including textiles.

Some women even acted as spies, and there is at least one documented case of a woman disguising herself as a man to fight in the war.

The American Revolution

By the time the British imposed the Coercive Acts, or the Intolerable Acts, as they became known in the North American colonies, revolutionary sentiment and activism had been on the rise.

The Coercive Acts, passed in 1774 as punishment for the Boston Tea Party, during which Boston radicals dumped over 300 crates of British tea into the harbor, was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back of continued loyalty to the mother country. These acts convinced many colonists that they could no longer afford to live under the increasingly tyrannical rule of the British and contributed to uniting the colonies in opposition to continued colonial control.

The Daughters of Liberty and homespun

After the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, the Daughters of Liberty was formed. Established in 1765, the organization was comprised solely of women who sought to demonstrate their loyalty to the revolutionary cause by boycotting British goods and making their own. Martha Washington, wife of George Washington, was one of the most prominent Daughters of Liberty.

Not only were women at the forefront of efforts to impose boycotts on British goods, they also spearheaded domestic production efforts. Because most textiles in the colonies were imported from Britain, weaving homespun cloth became an act of political rebellion. The Daughters of Liberty made public demonstrations of their spinning, such as the one at Newport, Rhode Island, where 92 women gathered in a meeting-house and produced 170 skeins of yarn.

What do you think?

What was so subversive about homespun?

In your opinion, what was the most important way that women contributed to the American Revolution?

How do you think women's wartime service might have affected their view of gender roles in the post-revolutionary period?

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Women in the American Revolution (article) | Khan Academy

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Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

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Newsela | American Revolution: The Native Americans’ War of Independence

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Native American tribes battled for their freedom and way of life for many years after the end of the American Revolution

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Learn about the biography of Molly Pitcher including her real name, folklore, where the name came from, Mary Ludwig Hays, Margaret Corbin, and interesting facts.

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Early Years

Although women didn't officially serve in the military until World War I, women have been serving in many roles alongside men since the Revolutionary War. Many of them were nurses or cooks, but some, like Deborah Sampson, dressed in a man's uniform and fought right alongside men on the battlefront.

Deborah Sampson was born on December 17, 1760, in Plympton, Massachusetts. Her family struggled to feed their seven children, so after her father was presumably lost at sea, her mother had to send the children to live at the homes of friends and relatives. Deborah became the indentured servant (someone under contract for another person for a definite amount of time, sometimes without pay but in exchange for passage to another country) of Jeremiah and Susannah Thomas, whom she lived with from the time she was ten until she was released from her servitude at 18. The Thomases had helped educate Deborah, so she was able to work as a school teacher in the summers of 1779 and 1780.

Sampson Heads to War

As the Revolutionary War continued to rage, Sampson was feeling restless. She didn't want to just be a nurse, though. She sewed a uniform for herself and said her name was Robert Shurtleff. Some say she enlisted in either 1781 or 1782 in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment. Here she served as a scout, meaning she had to go and find out where the British were encamped and how many of them were there and what kind of supplies they had. At this time the regiment was in New York.

In July of 1782, Sampson and two sergeants, along with 30 infantrymen, were exploring when they were confronted by British soldiers. She also led a raid on a Tory (usually British or someone who sided with the British) home that captured several Tories. She also dug trenches during the Battle of Yorktown.

Sampson was wounded three times while fighting. The first injury was a gash to the head. She knew she might be discovered if she went to a hospital, so she took care of the injury herself. Her second injury was a musket ball to the thigh. This time she had to go to the hospital but showed the doctor her head injury instead. There are two tales when it comes to the musket ball injury. Both say that Sampson treated the wound herself, but one tale has her getting the ball out and the other doesn't. Either way, the injury caused her pain the rest of her life. Her third injury was a shot in the shoulder.

Discovery and Discharge

In 1783, Sampson became ill. She was hospitalized while fighting in Philadelphia. While being treated by Dr. Barnabas Binney, her identity was discovered. Binney admired Sampson 's patriotism and let her recover from her fever at his house. Sampson had been serving under General John Patterson, so when she had recovered, Dr. Binney sent her to General Patterson with a letter telling him that Sampson wasn't a man named Robert, but was actually a woman. Sampson thought she'd be punished, but Patterson was supportive, as she had fought bravely and should be rewarded. Patterson wrote to General Henry Knox who then told General George Washington of the situation. Other generals and sergeants testified to Sampson's bravery, and she was given an honorable discharge in October of 1783.

Marriage

Upon her return to Massachusetts, Sampson met Benjamin Gannett. They married on April 7, 1785. They had three children: Earl, Mary, and Patience. They ran a farm in Sharon, Massachusetts, but they weren't very successful.

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deborah sampson: biography & facts - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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Deborah Sampson: Biography & Facts - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Although women didn't officially serve in the military until World War I, women have been serving in many roles alongside men since the Revolutionary War. Many of them were nurses or cooks, but some, like Deborah Sampson, dressed in a man's uniform and fought right alongside men on the battlefront.

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Meet Eve a Slave during the American Revolution

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Meet Eve a Slave during the American Revolution

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Williamsburg learned of the Declaration of Independence July 25, 1776. To slaves, it did not offer hope of liberty. Governor John Murray, fourth earl of Dunmore, had. In a proclamation issued during November 1775, the British promised to free the male slaves and indentured servants of rebels who repaired to the king's standard.

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by Lloyd Dobyns

Slaves and free blacks fought for the Continentals and for the British during the Revolutionary War. At Monmouth, African Americans faced each other. That battle did not matter much, nor, at the end of the war, did it much matter for which side blacks bore arms, at least as it concerned their freedom.

A few American slaves for their service to the rebels were rewarded with liberty, but the operative word is few. For the most part, slaves who fought for the rebels remained the property of their masters. Anglo Americans were fighting for their freedom, but not for the freedom of their slaves. Those who sided with the British were told, more or less, that they were manumitted and would be given land and self-government. They had a better hope for freedom with the British than they had with Americans. But the British found it easier to promise liberty and land than to provide them. Slaves who departed with the redcoats when the conflict was over were in their new lands-Canada, England, Australia, and Sierra Leone-still treated much as they had been before.

The first wholesale promise from the British of freedom to slaves came just as the war was starting, in November 1775. The last royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, having fled Williamsburg for his safety first to HMS Fowey and then to HMS William, offered freedom to slaves and indentured servants "able and willing to bear arms" for the British. There was, however, a catch.

Dunmore's proclamation applied to slaves owned by rebels, not to slaves held by loyalists. His offer, the realization of an oft-repeated threat, was intended as much to terrify and punish rebels, and to furnish himself with more troops, as to help the slaves. Though slavery had been limited in England three years before-the Court of Kings Bench ruled in 1772 that slaves could not be taken out of the realm for sale-it was still legal and would be until 1834. Nevertheless, the rumor spread in the colonies that slaves had been freed in Britain, and it proved a powerful magnet for bondsmen.

Blacks who answered Dunmore's call suffered hunger, disease, and bombardment. Eight times as many died of sickness as did of battle wounds. After Yorktown, where for practical purposes, the fighting ended six years later, they found that their sacrifices would profit them little. Yorktown meant victory for the American cause, but spelled disaster for the enslaved.

The Continentals, including George Washington's troops, had such a mixture of black and white soldiers that a French staff officer referred to them as "speckled." American combat troops were not integrated as they were in the 1770s and 1780s until the Korean War 170 years later.

Free blacks and slaves often enlisted from New England. The First Rhode Island, a majority black unit, was well known. In the South, there was a congressionally approved plan-never realized-to arm, and eventually to free, three thousand slaves for service as a military unit for South Carolina and Georgia. Slaves sent to take the place of white owners were commonplace in the ranks, particularly in southern state militias. British commanders other than Dunmore encouraged rebel slaves to run away, and run away they did. The figures are guesstimates, but they are the best we have. Dunmore's promise attracted eight hundred to a thousand blacks, about a third of them women, though his proclamation applied only to males. In the South, perhaps eighty thousand to one hundred thousand slaves ran to British lines.

As the war proceeded, some rebel slaves were given to loyalist slave owners or shipped to English slave properties in the Caribbean or, for that matter, sent back to their rebel owners when they proved of little or no value to the British.

Thomas Jefferson said he lost thirty slaves and that Virginia lost thirty thousand, but historians like Australia's Cassandra Pybus suspect his figures. She suggests Jefferson got his Virginia tally by adding three zeros to his own loss,which he had inflated anyway. Whatever the numbers, the flight of slaves to the British speaks volumes about the institution of slavery in America. Taking the lowest numbers, look how many people would risk anything or everything for a chance, just a chance, to be free.

A chance was all most ever got.

At Yorktown, toward the end of the siege, the British drove blacks toward American lines in the hope they would spread smallpox among the Continental and French troops.

Some black Yorktown soldiers ran away. Some well enough to travel afoot made it to Philadelphia with French troops. A French officer wrote in his diary, "We gained a veritable harvest of domestics."

When defeated and paroled British officers, including Cornwallis, shipped back to New York aboard the HMS Boneta, some former slaves went with them on Cornwallis's orders. A handful got to New York without help. No matter how they made it, the slaves who escaped the white Americans at Yorktown were the exception.

Some loyalists and their slaves headed for East Florida, a British colony, sailing with the English from Charleston and Savannah. When Britain ceded East Florida to Spain, the Spanish governor gave the loyalists time to escape to avoid threats from Georgia and South Carolina, and they sailed again to the West Indies. The slaves remained slaves, often on sugar plantations where they would be worked to death in three to five years.

Some ships from the Deep South went to New York, however, and others, especially those with British wounded, made directly for home. Former slaves apparently were on them all. The largest force of redcoats remaining on the continent sequestered itself in New York City and, with loyalists and others under their protection, waited for peace and the chance to clear out.

To this point, free former slaves got their liberty less as the result of a British plan than through persistence and luck. For some who lingered with the redcoats, luck changed.

The Americans signed a preliminary treaty with the English in 1782, and, since it ended the fighting, slave owners now could and did go to New York to search for, argue with, or kidnap their runaways. The treaty's Article Seven prohibited the British from "carrying away any Negroes or other property" of Americans. General Sir Guy Carleton, British commander, and Brigadier Samuel Birch issued what amounted to certificates of freedom to the blacks in the city. British officers simply ignored Article Seven, and Carleton said "property" must surely mean at the time the treaty was signed, so the former slaves already in New York were not included.

To emphasize his point, Carleton sent a fleet with five thousand settlers to Nova Scotia, including white loyalists and black runaways. We do not know how many of either. Historian Simon Schama identifies the episode as "a revolutionary moment in the lives of African-Americans." It may also have been the high point in their search for freedom.

Nova Scotia, on the southeast coast of Canada, extends farther south than northern Maine and is all but surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean-basically, a flat almost-island first settled by the French in 1605. Scots came in 1621, hence the name of the place, Latin for New Scotland.

The refugees landed in a cold, sparsely settled, forested place, populated by Scots, Protestants from France, Switzerland, and Germany, and a few of the Mi'kmaq tribesmen who were the original residents. In no time at all, it was clear that whatever the American blacks were called, and whatever they had been promised, they would be treated like slaves and live a life not much better, and a lot colder, than they had lived in the American colonies.

They were segregated in housing enclaves and churches, economically oppressed, cheated, and lied to. When, infrequently, land was parceled out, theirs was the worst. One of the few ways to survive was to sign on for pitiful wages as indentured servants to white loyalists, some from the slave-owning South. The major difference was that the former slaves could and did sue for redress of wrongs in the Nova Scotia courts and sometimes won against whites. In Virginia, by contrast, blacks could not, in district courts, so much as testify against whites.

Across the Atlantic, London had about ten thousand blacks in its population, some slaves or former slaves of Englishmen, some escaped Americans, some former or current sailors on navy vessels or merchantmen, including slave ships. All but a few were desperate. Most could not find jobs, and charity depended not on the doles of the government but on the generosity of the parish in which you were born. Since the majority of blacks were not born in England, their needy would freeze or starve to death on the streets before they enjoyed charitable help. Many were reduced to begging or stealing, and stealing was a bad idea, since it was in those days a hanging offense. If you escaped the gallows, you were thrown in a private, overcrowded prison with no bed, no heat, little food, and less sanitation. Typhus, known in those days as "jail fever," was regular.

The American Revolution had caused dreadful overcrowding of the prisons. Before the war, English courts sentenced fifty thousand criminals a year to be transported, that is to say, sent to the colonies, as indentured servants for seven years. That outlet was denied them when the British colonies became America's states. Instead, in something of a reversal, a group of poorly educated, untrained expatriates had gone from the states to England, many of whom had no way to live but crime. America, once the solution, had become the problem.

The first thing the British tried was to transport criminals to Africa, but that did not work. Among the reasons was that Africa was close enough that the criminals transported would join a ship's crew and transport themselves back.

On May 13, 1787, eleven ships loaded with more than eight hundred convicts and two hundred guards set sail for Botany Bay in Australia, halfway around the earth, more than thirteen thousand miles away. Captain James Cook was the first European to reach the east coast and claimed it for England in 1770. At the time, fewer than four hundred thousand aborigines lived on the almost three million square miles of the continent. Australia would eventually make its European population from the convicts of Great Britain, including former American slaves.

A year before the fleet sailed for Australia, the humanitarian gift of free bread to the poor had shown that most of London's impoverished blacks were former Americans who had fought for the British. Free bread did little to relieve them. Concerned Londoners said the solution was to send the poor to a place where they would be independent and self-sufficient.

Considering how badly the settlement in Nova Scotia was doing, the Committee for the Relief of Black Poor suggested Sierra Leone on the African west coast. It was a curious idea since the country was at the heart of the African slave trade, and, by rumor, it had been considered for a penal colony before Botany Bay was picked.

Sierra Leone was a fiasco, an encyclopedia of how to do things wrong. In May 1787, 377 people went ashore at Frenchman's Bay. By March 1788, 130 were left, a mortality rate that rivals early Jamestown in Virginia. People also died in Nova Scotia, where the weather was cold and windy.

When they were given a chance to relocate to Sierra Leone, twelve hundred of them, perhaps a third of the colony, sailed on fifteen British ships. They were promised self-government and no racial discrimination. The promises were empty. The settlement failed. The white officers of the Sierra Leone Company in London blamed it on the former slaves' curious and radical ideas of freedom. They were the same curious and radical ideas that had driven the American Revolution.

Descendants of the former slaves still live in Sierra Leone, Australia, and Nova Scotia.

One thing more. When British officers sent former slaves to Nova Scotia despite Article Seven, it had a consequence no one anticipated. The final peace treaty required that Americans pay their legitimate debts to English merchants, which were considerable. Some Americans refused, saying that if the British had not illegally carried away their property, the slaves could have been sold to satisfy those obligations. One of them was Thomas Jefferson.

View a clip of black soldiers in the Revolution
from Colonial Williamsburg's 2006 Electronic Field Trip "Yorktown."

Clip 1
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Large - Windows Media Player (1.7Mb)

Lloyd Dobyns, former NBC News television correspondent and journalism professor, contributed to the autumn 2006 journal an article on Colonial Williamsburg's Revolutionary City. A transcript of his Colonial Williamsburg podcast interview of Rhys Isaac appeared in the spring 2007 journal.
Suggestions for further reading:

Colonial African Americans

David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage (New York, 2006).

John Iliffe, Africans (Cambridge, 1995).

Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth (Cambridge, 2006).

Cassandra Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom (Boston, 2006).

Simon Schama, Rough Crossings (New York, 2006).

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Fighting... Maybe for Freedom, but probably not

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by Lloyd Dobyns Slaves and free blacks fought for the Continentals and for the British during the Revolutionary War. At Monmouth, African Americans faced each other. That battle did not matter much, nor, at the end of the war, did it much matter for which side blacks bore arms, at least as it concerned their freedom.

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The American Revolution was a time not only for the Colonists to gain freedom from the British, but for African-Americans to gain freedom from slavery. While Patriots were revolting, Abolitionists were pointing out the hypocrisy of slave-owners demanding independence. Blacks took the opportunity to prove their courage, heroism, ingenuity and intelligence with their efforts at war and reconstruction. Achievements on the battlefield, the courtroom and in business moved former slaves and freemen closer to complete emancipation.

African-Americans fought both for the Colonials and the Loyalists in the war. In 1775, Lord Dunmore, Governor of Virginia, offered freedom to any slaves willing to escape their Loyalist masters and fight for the British. Hundreds joined Dunmore in Virginia while thousands escaped across the south.This proclamation also galvanized rebel Americans against the Crown.
Agrippa Hull (1759-1848)
Hull was born free in Massachusetts. He enlisted with the Colonial Army in 1777, spending nearly five years as aide to Polish engineer Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a key figure in the young nation's defense. Hull also worked with the army's medical corps, learning to perform basic operations. After the war, Hull moved to Stockbridge where he used his savings to become the largest black land owner.
Titus Cornelius (1753?-1780)
Cornelius became known as Colonel Tye through his leadership and fighting skills with the Loyalist army. It was an honorary title, since the British did not bestow such titles on men of African descent. John Corlies, his former master, was a Quaker in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Despite the Quakers' increasing opposition to slavery, Corlies owned slaves and was well-known for punishing them fiercely. After the British granted his emancipation, Cornelius became one of the most feared guerrilla commanders in New Jersey, carrying out raids against his former master and other colonials. He freed slaves, took prisoners and seized supplies for the Crown.
Boston King (1760?-1802)
King also fought as a Loyalist after joining the British forces in Charleston. After the war he was granted his freedom. Prior to signing the peace treaty, the British compiled the Book of Negroes, a list of 3000 former slaves to be set free for their war efforts. King was relocated to Nova Scotia and eventually to Sierra Leone, where he was a fundamental minister and teacher in Freetown. King published his autobiography in 1798.

Crispus Attucks (1723?-1770)
Attucks was born into slavery in Massachusetts then escaped to a career at sea. He spent most of his life working on whaling vessels, but was in Boston on one famous day: the Boston Massacre. March 5, 1770, Attucks led a group of men with clubs to the Old State House to protest British occupation. Soldiers responded to the clubs with gun-shots. Six Colonists were wounded and five died, including Attucks, making him the first person to die in the American Revolution.
Prince Hall (1735?-1807)
Emancipated in 1765, Hall was a politically active abolitionist in Boston. He aggressively sought to end slavery in Massachusetts. He believed the Freemasons' ideals of equality and liberty were the best path to freedom for black men. Working for years against Masonic prejudice in America and Britain, Hall eventually founded African Lodge #1 in 1784, providing a union for free black men across the new colonies. In his lifetime, however, he never received acceptance from white Masons.

Elizabeth Freeman (1742?-1829)
Freeman was among the first slaves to file and win a "freedom suit" in Massachusetts, proving that slavery was illegal according to their constitution. Although the state did not officially make slavery illegal until the Emancipation Proclamation, her case marked the informal end of slavery in Massachusetts and became precedent in many cases to follow. "I heard that paper read yesterday, that says, all men are created equal," she said to young abolitionist lawyer Theodore Sedgewick, "and that every man has a right to freedom. I'm not a dumb critter; won't the law give me my freedom?"
Paul Cuffee (1759-1817)
Cuffee's father was a former slave released by his Quaker owner for moral reasons. He worked as a carpenter, farmer and fisherman until he could afford his own farm near Dartmouth, Massachusetts, where he raised ten children. Paul was the seventh. Paul taught himself to read and write. He learned about ships and sailing by talking with every sailor he encountered. He began working on whaling and cargo ships at the age of 16. In 1780, he refused to pay taxes because he was not allowed to vote. "Taxation without representation" was a fundamental complaint of the American Revolution. His petition to Bristol County was denied, but it led to legislation in 1783 allowing all free male citizens to vote.
Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806)
Son of a free African-American woman and a fugitive slave, Banneker became an important self-taught astronomer and scientist. His almanacs of the stars and tides were sold widely. Modeled after a pocket watch, his wooden clock kept time until after his death. He corresponded regularly with Thomas Jefferson regarding racial equality. He took part in the boundary survey which designated the land for the District of Columbia. Parks, schools and streets have been named after him in Maryland and beyond. His numerous accomplishments have blossomed into a considerable mythology.

References

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Eight Famous African Americans During the Revolutionary War

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The American Revolution was a time not only for the Colonists to gain freedom from the British, but for African-Americans to gain freedom from slavery. While Patriots were revolting, Abolitionists were pointing out the hypocrisy of slave-owners demanding independence. Blacks took the opportunity to prove their courage, heroism, ingenuity and intelligence with their efforts at war and reconstruction.

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Learn about African Americans during the Civil War including soldiers and regiments. Famous patriots such as Crispus Attucks, James Armistead, William Lee, and Peter Salem.

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Fourth Grade Collection of American Rev.

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Fourth Grade Collection of American Rev.

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